Is Black Heart Still King?

So, with the FAQ, the Kabal of the Black Heart received two key nerfs;

1. Agents of Vect now costs 4 CP
   
2. You can only regain 1 CP a round from Labyrinthine Cunning

Prior to this change, Black Heart Spearheads were almost a staple of Aeldari lists in tournaments. Even with this change, BH Ravagers are going to be very good thanks to their interaction with Writ of the Living Muse and how cheap they are.

But.

The nerfs really make Black Heart less attractive, overall, and I think it's likely that Black Heart may no longer be the meta-defining Kabal choice. I preferred running Flayed Skull anyway and now I don't think I'm going to feel like I'm making a sub-optimal choice doing so - the bonus move speed, cover ignoring and re-rolls to hit outshine Black Heart's strengths now, at least in my mind.

So what are your thoughts on this? Does this open up the field for other Kabals a bit, or is Black Heart still going to be the best choice?

I surely will keep my Black Heart Spearhead just because Ravagers with 6+++ and Write of the Living Muse are still so powerful. And even with the changes done to Labyrinthine Cunning, I prefer it over a melee Archon WL trait (not to mention that my BH Archon wants to stay back buffing Ravagers).

Would I take a BH batallion now? No.
But I wouldn't have taken one to begin with.

I can't really say, but for now, if IKs will continue to be a threat I would says yes. Almost a detatchment for keeping Vect.

The real change is I don't really wanna the BH Warlord again. Don't care about regen CP now

As someone who doesn't regularly play Black Heart, I can honestly say that I've now got no desire to try them.

I played a game yesterday using the new FAQ and Obsidian Rose. It worked out quite well, though I still missed having 6+++ on my vehicles and writ of the living muse. However, I do think that there is no longer a clear/obvious choice in which kabal to take.

Black heart were never really "king". They were good for the spearhead, but beyond that almost every player in the discussion groups I frequent ran everything else kabal as flayed skull

The spearhead is still probably the best we got.

The Air Detatchment for me now is better than the Spearhead.

For my playstyle, Obsidian Rose hits the spot. Haven't really been running anything else.

I mean, we could split the Kabals into their component benefits (Kabal Bonus, Warlord Trait, Artefact, and Stratagem) and see how they compare to Black Heart.

e.g.

Poison Tongue

Kabal Bonus
I'd say Poison Tongue is much better for all Kabal Infantry and Venoms, but Black Heart is far better for Raiders, Ravagers and Fliers.

Warlord Trait
The Poison Tongue warlord trait is probably the worst in the codex. Even with the nerf, Black Heart wins this hands-down.

Artefact
Black Heart provides a decent bonus in theory, but with Kabal's limited units and the Archon's lack of mobility, it's probably only going to be meaningful for Ravagers. Might be worth noting also that PT gets the same bonus on all Poison and melee weapons as standard. The Poison Tongue artefact is a much more personal affair and allows an Archon to snipe (or at least threaten) enemy characters even when they're completely out of sight. Both are strong, but personally I prefer the Soul Seeker. I think it's more interesting than yet another reroll 1s aura and doesn't basically lock your Archon into the role of babysitting 3 Ravagers.

Stratagem
Poison Tongue has a pretty good redeploy stratagem, which might actually be even more useful given the changes to Deep Strike. In contrast, with the increase in cost and the changes to CP regeneration, I think Agents of Vect is really starting to cross the line of simply being too expensive to be worthwhile. Taken alone, it's obviously a nice tool to have in your pocket. However, given the opportunity cost of having to take Black Heart, it seems you're having to bank quite a bit on your opponent relying on a single stratagem that will be worth you spending a huge chunk of CP to counter. Not saying it can't happen, but I think the threat value of Agents of Vect has been severely diminished.

Overall
After the changes, I actually think it's pretty even. PT has a better bonus for infantry and Venoms, BH is better for vehicle-heavy. Artefacts are also pretty even (I have a slight leaning towards the Soul Seeker, but that might just be personal preference). Agents of Vect is still a nice thing to have in reserve, but given how inefficient it is now (and that you won't be able to regenerate many CP), many people might prefer the cheap redeploy stratagem from PT. It could potentially be used in place of deep striking Ravagers, to get them out of range/sight of most enemy heavy weapons on turn 1, but still allowing them to fire from turn 1. I think the only place where BH really pulls ahead is the Warlord Trait, which is just orders of magnitude better than the PT one (even after the nerf). However, given that the 3 basic Archon traits are all really good, I don't think this is a huge issue for PT.

Whether you’re running Poisoned Tongue or Obsidian Rose, you’re still very much served with a Black Heart spearhead for Ravagers and transports. Flayed Skull need their own transports and get a nice buff on Ravagers too, so the Spearhead is less attractive.

withershadow wrote:

Whether you’re running Poisoned Tongue or Obsidian Rose, you’re still very much served with a Black Heart spearhead for Ravagers and transports.

One issue with doing that with Poison Tongue is that you then can't redeploy those units using the PT Stratagem, which could cause problems.

Im still going to use Black Heart Spearhead with 3 Ravagers and 4 Transports like i have been. Im a firm believer in the 6+++

I also always take Flayed Skull Airwing and a PoF detachment.

Looking at all the changes, it has no bearing on my list. CA in nov/dec might change things tho.

In the new era after Faq, I prefer Obsidian Rose and Flayed Skull. The first one because I love his stratagem when i play 20 DS Warriors full equi, and the second one because now that there is a generic stratagem that gives +1 cover is very useful ignore it with the ravagers.

I think I will try to play no Ravagers at all for a bit. Keeping them in reserves now is a bad deal against any faster army able to pressure you up, but at the same time you get a risk to deploy them down (even with the cover save). I feel that Razorwings will be more durable because they can combine -1 to hit with the cover benefit. Of course you can hide your Ravagers but 1) there are some guns that fires without line of fire, or some faster units that can move a lot and target them (depends a lot by the table itself), and 2) Protecting them means exposing other stuffs which is different from before, even if totally fair.

Razorwings seems better than Ravagers for me overall, now. Plus, you can pick 3 of them from the BH, keeping the battalion free for the Flayed Skull/Obsidian Rose (and why not, taking 3 RazorsBH+3RavagersFL).



In the end, now that Fly models cannot charge over enemies, tie up units charging them with Venoms/Raiders is way more difficult right now. So you need to shoot down any meat shield before usefull charges and I can see pretty well some 19"-moving Venoms carrying 5Kabals w/shredders for some opening volley into them (more than before, because first turn aip-off+cover straragem helps A LOT aggressive advances strategies).

Cerve wrote:

In the end, now that Fly models cannot charge over enemies, tie up units charging them with Venoms/Raiders is way more difficult right now. So you need to shoot down any meat shield before usefull charges and I can see pretty well some 19"-moving Venoms carrying 5Kabals w/shredders for some opening volley into them (more than before, because first turn aip-off+cover straragem helps A LOT aggressive advances strategies).

Generally speaking, I don't do much charging with venoms/raiders that have kabalites in them, so that might not be too much of an issue (for me). Red Grief raiders, on the other hand, might be able to use that 22" move/advanced aethersails strat to go over screens and charge from an unprotected angle.

krayd wrote:

Cerve wrote:

In the end, now that Fly models cannot charge over enemies, tie up units charging them with Venoms/Raiders is way more difficult right now. So you need to shoot down any meat shield before usefull charges and I can see pretty well some 19"-moving Venoms carrying 5Kabals w/shredders for some opening volley into them (more than before, because first turn aip-off+cover straragem helps A LOT aggressive advances strategies).

Generally speaking, I don't do much charging with venoms/raiders that have kabalites in them, so that might not be too much of an issue (for me). Red Grief raiders, on the other hand, might be able to use that 22" move/advanced aethersails strat to go over screens and charge from an unprotected angle.

Depends, I never deploy Venoms for that role. But if the game ask it, more than once I disembarked 6 Kabals and used their Venom for that

No Ravagers feels extreme. Sure, you can't protect them easily any more if you're going second but they're still dirt cheap at a mere 125 points.

It's a shame they can't get re-rolls from Flayed Skull, but they still benefit from ignoring cover and the additional movement. The stratagem is nice too.

THE SUPREME OVERLORD IS DEAD! VECT IS DEA-*shank*

I'm pretty cool with these changes, Black Heart still has a lot to offer but it isn't the 'obvious' choice in the meta anymore. I'll still run a Black Heart detachment one way or the other, it's a great Stratagem even if it only sees use once or not at all.

lcfr wrote:

THE SUPREME OVERLORD IS DEAD! VECT IS DEA-*shank*

I'm pretty cool with these changes, Black Heart still has a lot to offer but it isn't the 'obvious' choice in the meta anymore. I'll still run a Black Heart detachment one way or the other, it's a great Stratagem even if it only sees use once or not at all.

So far, I've only used AoV twice - both times to prevent a CP reroll on a save for an opponent's warlord. It is a little annoying that it will cost more, but then again, I won't be spending 3 CP on screaming jets to hide 3 ravagers anymore (though it is possible that I might have to spend 2 CP on Prepared Positions, and possibly 1 more for Hunt from the Shadows)

With the recent FAQs, I think Kabal of the Black Hearth went from: auto-take, to: good choice so I spent some time comparing the Kabals, trying to figure out which one is the best. The short answer, imo, is now: it depends on your list and playstyle.

When comparing the kabals, you need to consider 4 components: the obsession trait, the relic, stratagem and the warlord trait.

Obsession trait
The Kabal of the black heart one is nearly useless to infantry model since they don’t really benefit from power from pain (aside from the 6+++) until the 4th item on the list which mean the obsession comes into play only at turn 3. While it’s nice, unless you play large blob of warriors, it likely your 5 men units will die if anything points its guns at it. What’s interesting here is the 6+++ to vehicle but does it really make a difference? Let’s assume a Razorwing Jetfighter is shot by 4 lascannon wielding space marines. That’s an average of 4-5 damage of which a BH RWJ would save slightly less than 1 on average. These marines would need 3 rounds of shooting to kill the RWJ. Now if those marines are luck and roll sixes to their damage roll instead of 3.5, we’re looking at 12 damage a turn of which 2 should be saved. The RWJ still crash, on average, but it still has a decent chance to survive a lucky round of shooting.
Does it mean it’s useless? No. those numbers are for one vehicle only. If you are playing a mechanized force (which a lot of kabal heavy armies does, these save starts to add and you get a decent mileage out of your obsession. Without much vehicle? Others obsession are better imo.

The kabal of the flayed skull obsession trait is harder to measure. +3” to move may not look like much but it can allow a venom to get into rapid fire range more easily or to bring an assault unit into charging range more reliably. Likely, it can also take out of of threat range and allow you to grab a distant objective in less turn (potentially allowing you one more turn of shooting before grabbing objectives). The reroll 1 to hit for rapid firing weapon is also nice since it replaces the Archon aura when you are inside a transport. Let assume 8 Kabalites are in rapid firing range. We looking at 12.5 hits for the flayed skull vs 10.7 for other kabals. Not game breaking but not to shabby either. But also, it helps mitigate the rare (but not rare enough for my taste) occurrences where like 8 ones are going to show up on that dice throw. Obviously, this obsession is only good if you run kabalite in transports. If you are footslogging or WWPing them, look for another Kabal. Also the more shots the better so this trait works better when you want to keep your venoms and gunboat into rapid firing range, so it favors a more aggressive playstyle. If you like the hang back and shoot (which is a good idea if you are facing a lot of assault army in your meta, you should rather look at obsidian rose.

Kabal of the obsidian rose is indeed at its best when hanging back. +6” to weapons may not look like much but we’re talking about 42” DL/DC, 24” blasters, 18” Shredders and 30” (15” rapid fire!) splinter rifle. Let’s say you want to drown a close combat unit in poison (let’s assume a 6” move). You get into 15” and fire away. On the next turn, they move up to you and still need a 9” charges (~17% chance of success). For regular kabal, you are within 12” after their move they need a 5” charge (~73% chance of success). For Ravager, it means they keep 54” away from their target which can prevent lascannons (or other 48” weapons) from reaching them without the unit having to move. I haven’t had the chance to test it yet but I think it’s a much better trait than people are thinking.

Finally, the much unloved Kabal of the poisoned tongue. Let’s use the classic MEQ to determine if this trait is better than the Flayed Skull one. Again, let’s assume 8 Kabalite in a raider without splinter rack.
KFS : 16 shots, 12.54 hits, 6.27 wounds.
KPT : 16 shots, 10,72 hit, ~5.86 wounds.
So yeah, for shooting it’s not that good. However it also works on melee weapons but since Archon is the only kabal melee unit… There’s no reason to choose that Kabal for its obsession.

Best Obsession : None. Poison Tongue is bad but all other 3 are good. BH for vehicle heavy armies, FS for aggressive mechanized armies and Obsidian Rose for more conservative armies or for footslogging.


Stratagems
Agent of Vect: This trait is the main reason we saw BH pop in every single aeldari army in the tournament scene. In that context it’s exceptionally powerful since of lot of tournament armies rely on combos to win. In friendly (while still competitive game) I only used it once or max twice per game, general to counter an important reroll but it was never really game changing. At 4 CPs I consider it overcosted in non-super competitive environment but at 3 CPs it was still better than the other Kabals. It’s still worth having in your army though since it keeps your opponents honest and may lead him to wait until it’s too late to use his CPs (or waste them on less important stratagem in an attempt to lure you to use AoV)

Insidious Misdirection: This is why you choose to play poisoned tongue. It’s undervalued by a lot of people but redeploying units may be huge. I won (and lost) more games than I can count during the deployment phase. It works especially well against static armies. I like to deploy my ravagers on one side of the board, luring my opponent into deploying his big guns with a line of sight on them. I, then, redeploy them somewhere safe. It wasn’t that useful before the FAQ because having them in reserve was better but it’s now our best way to protect our most valuable units (assuming you have decent terrain on your map which is not always the case in tournament)

Failure is not an option: You want to field a warrior blob? You need this to protect yourself from moral. It’s a well know combo but after taking loss, you pick the blaster to run away, they will most likely kill something (remember those have 24” range) which will prevent your loss and allow the blasters to shoot more often. It’s nice, especially with WWP but it still requires your opponent to shoot at you so you can use it, it doesn’t save the warriors who died to enemy fire and you can’t use it pass turn 3 since you can’t fail moral thanks to power from pain. So you are looking at a maximum of 2 turns to use it (assuming you are playing first. If they WWP at the bottom of turn 2, your opponent only gets the chance to shoot at them at the start of turn 3 before they become immune to moral). So yeah, it looks good on paper but when you look at practical application it’s just not worth choosing your kabal based on this stratagem.

Master of the shadowed sky: +1 to hit against fly unit. Is it good? Let’s check. We’re going to use the triple DC ravager shooting at a plane to test it.
FS: 9 shots for 6 hits
Other kabal: 9 shots for 4.5 hits
We’re talking about 1-2 more hits which means 1-2 wounds for 2-4 damage. Pretty good un flyer heavy meta and remember this works on all units with keywords FLY, not just flyers.

Best Stratagem: It’s a tie for AoV and Insidious Misdirection imo. Master of shadowed sky comes next and Failure is not an option is last.

Relics
Writh of the living muse: Reroll are powerful no matter how you look at it. But since it doesn’t work in transport, it means it can only be used on rather static backfield units hence the famous BH spearhead with 3 ravagers. I won’t debate about it being good or bad because it makes Ravagers slower, it’s been done elsewhere. Statistically, we’re looking at about one more wound per ravager for a triple DC one. Good but not exceptional. IMO it shines more with triple DL ravager because it helps mitigate the DL curse (I always roll 50% ones to hit and to wound with my dark lance). You can’t underestimate the value of making you best weapons more reliable. But if you are not running ravagers, I see no points in using this relic.

Soul-Seeker: Targeting character is cool but 2 shots of AP-1 D3 damage won’t threaten any important character.

Armor of misery: It’s pretty good since it allows you to retain a save after you lose your shadowfield and we all know that -1 to hit is awesome. However, obsidian rose want to hang back to take advantage of their superior range so it’s unlikely you’re going to send your archon along into combat. So, it’s only good if you have a melee portion in your army (Incubi, Cult or Coven)

Obsidian Veil : Not much to say, it allow you to retain an decent invul save after you lose shadowfield. I would rather take Helm of spite in a psyker heavy meta or the djinn blade in case I get stuck in combat.

Best Relic : Unless you are planning to go into melee with your archon, Writh is better, other wise Armor of Misery then Obsidian Veil. Soul-Seeker is garbage.


Warlord Traits
Labyrinthine of cunning: More CPs is always good. Even now that you are limited to one per battle round. It’s just not a MUST HAVE anymore. If you are taking BH for other reasons, you will want this. But you will not be taking BH just so you can take this.

Towering arrogance: This is by far the worst one. Most of the time we’re looking at the whooping +1 ld for units that are going to be immune to moral on turn 4… If you are playing poisoned tongue use one of the generic warlord traits or make someone else your warlord.

Deathly perfectionist: +1 damage to warlord’s weapons. Pretty good on huskblades and blast pistol. If you’re planning to send your warlord into melee take this. Otherwise pick something else.

Famed savagery: +1A and +1 STR when charging/being charged? This is awesome if you plan to get into melee. Obsidian Rose will do more damage per wounds but this will allow you to wound more often.

Best Trait : Labyrinthine of cunning is still the best one, closely followed by Famed savagery but only if you plan to send your warlord into assault. Deathly perfectionist comes next and leave Towering arrogance at home.


In conclusion, which Kabal is the best? I can’t say. Poisoned Tongue really is underwhelming however an argument can be made to include a small detachment (triple ravager spearhead imo) of it to get access to their stratagem which can be quite good (always assuming you play with decent terrain).
Black Hearth have good stuff in all components (obsession, relic, stratagem and warlord trait).
Flayed Skull have a weak relic but the rest is good, especially if you plan to play aggressively (you will get into combat want it or not if you hang mid-field. Shooting flyers more easily is always good.
Obsidian rose is good if you want to play more defensively. This make their relic and warlord trait less useful and their stratagem is meh at best.
So, for me, BH is still at the top. But it shares the spot with either FS or OR based on your playstyle

Deamon wrote:

Finally, the much unloved Kabal of the poisoned tongue.  Let’s use the classic MEQ to determine if this trait is better than the Flayed Skull one.  Again, let’s assume 8 Kabalite in a raider without splinter rack.
KFS : 16 shots, 12.54 hits, 6.27 wounds.
KPT : 16 shots, 10,72 hit, ~5.86 wounds.
So yeah, for shooting it’s not that good.  However it also works on melee weapons but since Archon is the only kabal melee unit…  There’s no reason to choose that Kabal for its obsession.

I fear your math has gone wrong here.

16 shots should yield 6.22 wounds regardless of whether you're using Poison Tongue or Flayed Skull.

Working:

Spoiler:

Deamon wrote:

Soul-Seeker: Targeting character is cool but 2 shots of AP-1 D3 damage won’t threaten any important character.
...
Soul-Seeker is garbage.

I think you're undervaluing Soul Seeker, honestly.

The damage isn't amazing, but it's still more than enough to threaten many secondary/support characters, and being able to ignore LoS and Cover is nothing to sneeze at. You even have the option of charging into melee, since it's still a pistol.

The only thing that really bugs me about the Soul Seeker is that you can't use the PT reroll with it. Quite frankly, the GW designer who came up with that restriction deserves to have a Ravager inserted into their rectum.

I stand corrected
However I still think Soul-Seeker can liveup to the other kabal relic and even to some of the generic ones.

It is very odd that GWs specifically restricted synergy between a lot of the Dark Eldar relics/traits/and wargear its the only codex I think I have seen that in. Personally I alternate between PT and FS as my preferred obsession I think both have the most synergy with the kabalites in gunboats play style. I suspect post FAQ that FS will edge it as they counter prepared positions. I do really love the PT strat though its phenomenally powerful for a skilled player and extremely characterful to boot I love the idea of a mon keigh army flailing helplessly at where three ravagers were 30 seconds before. Being able to target characters with a ranged weapon regardless of them being the closest model is incredibly useful against certain armies and it is something that Dark Eldar can lack, whilst I admit that a single weapon able to do this doesn't make all that much difference but against armies that rely heavily on auras to function or a character like a commissar to prevent LD issues the ability to remove him then hit multiple units with little bits of firepower and PGL shouldn't be underestimated

Black Heart is still a mandatory take. The clock is reset back to April when our codex first came out. Normally I don't like to proselytize my own videos outside of the socially acceptable signature linking to my channel, but considering I read that entire wall of text only to realize there was no definitive answer, I must beg your indulgence.



Agents of Vect is still a show stopper. Labyrinthine Cunning was never a CP battery so much as it was a trickle. It was like trying to stop a leak with too little tape, it didn't stop the water from getting out but it slowed it down. Now it's even worse at that job but it still does it, unlike most of the other warlord traits which are virtually useless. They all benefit the Archon only, and the Archon's job takes one of two forms, either waddling alone into combat (or supported by units it cannot interact with because GW decided our army works like that now I guess) or waddling around with a bunch of units orbiting around it for rerolls. In both of these scenarios the statistical buffs to the warlord, considering what it can be armed with, is useless compared to even just 1 extra CP.

Flayed Skull might win out for 1 turn, but that's 1 turn. And then you know that if your opponent knows you ignore cover, they're not going to spend the 2CP for the stratagem, and then you're right back to where you started.